It’s still too hot to think here. It’s going to be even hotter than originally believed (I use the word advisedly; see below). The forecast for the next few days:
courtesy KOMO News 4which made me think of this article in The Atlantic about planet-wide engineering solutions to global warming.
The AtlanticAs the threat of global warming grows more urgent, a few scientists are considering radical—and possibly extremely dangerous—schemes for reengineering the climate by brute force. Their ideas are technologically plausible and quite cheap. So cheap, in fact, that a rich and committed environmentalist could act on them tomorrow. And that’s the scariest part.
(thanks, Cindy)
The lunatics’ argument goes something like: Hey, we changed the earth’s climate (turned the last 200 years into the ‘anthropocene period’) so we should, y’know, just change it back. I assume I’m not the only person who trembles in her boots at such a thought. Don’t people learn anything? Just look at huge projects like the Three Gorges dam. They always, always have unexpected (usually miserable) consequences.
I’ve just read an interesting opinion piece in The New Scientist about attitudes to climate change. I’m too hot and cross to summarise the whole thing, but essentially the commentator explains why people in general don’t believe in climate change, and why that’s a bad thing. I think he’s mostly right, but forgets that people tend to believe what is convenient, and climate change–unless you’re an olive grower in England–is bloody inconvenient.
I tell you: I believe in climate change. It may hit 100 degrees here in Seattle on Wednesday. One hundred degrees. In Seattle.
Nicola Griffith 
I like this term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogenocene
Speaking of potentially disasterous projects in environmental engineering, have you followed Bill Gates' aquisition of patents for hurricane control?
In his defense, someone on his team has been cited as saying that this would be a last resort thing, only for if climate change caused intolerably severe distruptions to weather patterns. (Though the patents are only for 18 years, so I'm skeptical about that explanation—nothing *that* huge has a significant possibility of happening in the next 18 years.)
Yeah, we've got your weather — cool and rainy. I'm planting more rhododendrons.
Seriously, I think half the problem with people believing in climate change is the name. When it's colder than usual, it's hard to get people to believe in global warming. It's hard to see the larger picture when you're in the midst of local conditions that seem to belie what you're being told.
Well, from the bits I've researched for my futuristic WIP, it's not always that the temp gets hotter than usual. Things get crazy, weather-wise. Weather takes on more extremes–hotter when hot, colder when cold, more hurricanes and tornadoes, and things dry out dangerously, which is a major issue here in the West.
We're wetter and colder than normal. I realize that PA is the watershed for the both the Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio Valley, but our rain fall has been ridiculous. It rained again today. At least I don't have to water the garden, but still.
Yes, and here in Pennsylvania, as jennifer from pittsburgh states, it continues to rain…want to trade weekend weather — 100 degrees doesn't thrill me, but sun would? *would smile winningly, but realizes weather systems don't work like that* And, much like sex scenes at starbucks, I think the weather will just get weirder and wilder…so basically, I'm having a rare agreeable day (unlike the aforementioned weather) and weather systems don't work at all.
Years ago Ben Bova told me that the first signs of genuine global warming would be extreme weather, whether extra cold, extra hot, more hurricanes…just more extreme. Later would come the extra heat. Mordicai, I like your word.
THe problem I'm always tripping over is short-term thinking, it's related to electoral terms in office here. I've never liked it but have understood it until now when not only industry, suburbs or cities are at risk.
Last night I watched a usually benign BBC tv program which is popular here in Oz, Antiques Road Show. It was filmed in Humberside – can't remember the town but it was once several miles from the coast and is now only about one quarter mile from the coast. Do we actually have government?
mordicai, hadn't come across that one before.
wendy, I think our rhodies are moribund. We've fussed over them for 3 years but I think they're just fried.
jude, I love Antiques Roadshow. I haven't seen the ep you're talking about but it sounds like Hornsea.
Wisconsin has been cooler than usual. I don't think we've hit 90 yet and if we have, it was fleeting. Farmers Almanac is calling for a ten year cold spell. We're in year two….two winters ago we had seven feet of snow, last year not quite that, but close.
I tend to ise the term Global Climate Change too rather than Global Warming. Nothing warm about what's happening here.